Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest employer, garnered much attention when it said it would raise entry-level wages to $9 an hour in April and then to $10 an hour by February 2016. The move was expected to have a domino effect among other companies and soon after it spurred TJX Cos., the parent company of T.J. Maxx and Marshalls, to follow suit.

Analysts have said that Target would have to match those wages in order to hang on to employees amid a tightening labor market. After all, retailers are not duking it out just on price and the specific products they sell, but also on the customer service inside their stores.

The 171 regional presbyteries (local leadership bodies within the PCUSA) have been voting on whether to change the wording to call marriage a contract “between a woman and a man” to being “between two people, traditionally a man and a woman.” On Tuesday, the denomination reached its needed majority of “yes” votes from at least 86 presbyteries to take effect. The change will be included in the church’s “Book of Order,” part of its constitution, taking effect on June 21.

• A stray pit bull was found nursing a two-day-old kitten by the side of the road. Both have been saved by animal rescuers but when a vet took the kitten home at night to bottle-feed it, the pit bull started howling. Let’s hope the two can find a home together. They’re in the Dallas area:

• A jury has decided that “Blurred Lines” really is a rip-off of a Marvin Gaye song. Yes, fuck that song. By the way, this is also a piece of Tennessee good news as the lawyer representing the plaintiffs is based in Nashville.

• Nationwide, gun ownership is actually declining. It’s actually fewer gun loons buying more guns. That explains so much about the push to mainstream that which should never be normalized — mainly, carrying your gun everywhere. Eagerly look forward to the day when these people are all put out of business.

Since January 2011, when Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown Jr., became governor for the third time, the 63 publicly traded California companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 produced the best total return among the five states with the largest populations. California companies in the S&P 500 delivered returns of 134 percent; the closest big-state challenger was Florida, whose S&P companies had an 82 percent return, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Texas-based companies delivered 52 percent during the period.

Companies domiciled in California also outperformed the S&P 500 during the past four years by a margin of 23 percent. Among the California industries making the state No. 1 in business are health care, returning 267 percent, consumer staples (302 percent), specialty pharma (235 percent), energy (30 percent) and biotech (333 percent).

Maybe high taxes and strong regulations don’t daunt business leaders if well spent and well aimed. Places that prepare for big 21st-century challenges such as urbanization, climate change and globalization are likely to be the most successful. California companies lead the U.S. in confronting these risks with superior results for shareholders and bondholders. The corporate performance coincides with growing confidence in the state under Governor Brown, now in his fourth term. That’s shown by the biggest four-year drop in the cost of state credit default swaps, a kind of insurance against bondholders’ losses and a way to speculate on creditworthiness.

The charges against Woods, originally brought in 1980, were based on a confession that prosecutors now evidently believe was false.

[…]

Woods made the confession that led to her imprisonment in 1979 while she was a patient at a psychiatric hospital in Louisiana, claiming that she killed “a girl named Michelle,” the Reno-Gazette journal reports. She later recanted, and now says she doesn’t remember making the confession, her public defender Maizie Pusich said.

“I’m told it was a product of wanting to get a private room,” Pusich told the AP. “She was being told she wasn’t sufficiently dangerous to qualify, and within a short period she was claiming she had killed a woman in Reno.”

Cheese and rice, people. How on earth is a “confession” made at a psychiatric hospital sufficient evidence for a conviction? Thank God she wasn’t executed.

Good News, Tennessee Edition:

• A bill working its way through the state legislature would require all Tennessee law enforcement officers to wear body cameras.

• Efforts to end gun background checks on some purchases and legalize open carry without a permit have failed.

• Go you chicken fat, go! MTSU agricultural science team drives cross country on used chicken fat and cooking oil from the university’s kitchen. All hail the “Southern Fried Fuel Expedition.”

• A Hamilton County circuit court judge (who happens to be a former chair of the Hamilton County GOP) has ruled that the state’s cap on non-economic damages is unconstitutional. This was Gov. Haslam’s shining achievement which was supposed to spur economic activity, under the ridiculous notion that companies don’t operate here because of “frivolous lawsuits.” Umm … no.

This week’s cool video, courtesy of Snoop: He wants you to unload your investments from gun manufacturers:

• Better late than never: an 82-year-old billionaire is performing his “first major act of philanthropy” by selling his extensive art collection to give money to the Harlem Children’s Zone. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth but if you’re 82 years old and a billionaire and just now thinking about some major acts of philanthropy you’re kind of a dick. But at least something finally trickled down to the Harlem Children’s Zone.

• Tea Party cries Uncle on Dept. of Homeland Security funding. Do you think they’ve finally got the message that government shutdown after government shutdown, ad nauseum, is not a tactic that inspires confidence in their ability to govern? Probably not.

This week’s cool video comes from the Memphis Zoo, where their polar bear, Payton, is having the time of his life enjoying a rare snowfall. I am absolutely obsessed with this video. It almost makes the snow seem worthwhile:

Seven medical specialty societies, the American Bar Assn. and the American Public Health Assn. on Monday joined forces to declare gun-related injuries, which annually kill an average of 32,000 Americans and harm nearly twice that number, “a public health crisis” that should be studied and solved “free of political influence or restriction.”

Duh. But it wasn’t too long ago that these groups would have been too scared and intimidated by the NRA shouters and screamers to even dream of supporting such a logical idea.

Good News, Tennessee Edition:

• Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry House has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. Though built in the early ’70s, it was recognized as a cultural resource. The Ryman Auditorium, which has long been associated with the Grand Ole Opry, was recognized in 2001.

• Despite losing to the Minnesota Wild last night, my beloved Nashville Predators are the top team in the NHL. In the whole friggin’ National Hockey League, you guys! This has been such a long time coming. We are playoff-bound, and I smell a Stanley Cup!

• When the Monroe County animal shelter lost its power this week, the good people at the Monroe County Friends Of Animals Thrift Store stepped in to house the shelter’s large dogs. Let me add: if you’re a dog in a rural animal shelter, your prospects are not very good. Please consider adopting from a rural shelter.

This week’s video: Riley and Willie playing tuggie in the snow. Riley gets pretty vocal when he plays tuggie but it’s all in good fun. And I love how it takes Riley a minute to realize he actually won, and then he does his happy dance. He cracks me up.

Some happy news to close out the week. Been a tough week with losing Quinn, and then this morning I had to take Willie to the vet because he’s stopped eating. He hoovers up everything in sight and has a serious shoe fetish so I’m worried it will be one of these scenarios. On top of that, I’m coming down with a sinus infection. Just in time for Valentine’s Day. Blech. So, happy thoughts.

The group represents growers and distributors that handle 90% of Mexico’s produce exports to the United States, which have tripled over the last decade and now exceed $7.5 billion a year.

Separately, Wal-Mart said it is taking action to ensure that workers are treated with “respect and dignity,” reminding its in-house buyers that they should buy produce only from farms that meet the company’s standards for decent treatment of workers.

Wal-Mart also said it will ask outside suppliers to certify that they have visited “any new facility they plan to use for Wal-Mart production” and that the facilities meet company standards.

Wal-Mart said it would send a team of senior leaders to attend meetings with growers involved with the new initiative, called the International Produce Alliance to Promote a Socially Responsible Industry. Senior executives have also been assigned to examine ways to partner with other groups to improve conditions.

• Justice 2: the police officer who assaulted an Indian grandfather visiting his grandson in a Huntsville, Alabama suburb has been fired and arrested for assault. Horrible story, and it all started because some neighborhood idiot called in about a suspicious “skinny black guy.”

The research was conducted by the Office of Net Assessment, a secretive, internal Pentagon think tank. It defined Asperger’s syndrome as “an autistic disorder which affects all of his decisions.”

The analysis is solely based on videos of Putin’s public actions, dating back to the year 2000. The researchers did not claim to have access to any data from scans of Putin’s brain.

According to the report, “Putin’s neurological development was significantly interrupted in infancy.”

The study also hypothesizes that Putin suffered an “insult” to his brain while he was still in his mother’s womb and that she may have suffered a stroke while pregnant with him. Researchers theorized that may have affected the way Putin thinks and moves the right side of his body.

“His primary form of compensation for his disorder is extreme control and this is reflected in his decision style and how he governs,” the report says.

• In the mother of all ironies, the Tea Party group True The Vote, which challenges voter eligibility, found that 59% of the voters stricken from Kansas’ voter rolls in a recent “anti-voter fraud” purge are actually eligible to vote. Major fail all around.

• The Tennessee State Supreme Court has ruled against Barrett Firearms over a land dispute. It’s an interesting case with a lot of moving pieces to it, but basically Barrett was hoping the State of Tennessee would in essence bail them out of their obligations on an access road. Corporate welfare, etc.

• Major victory for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and all who oppose the revoling door between Wall Street and government regulators: Antonio Weiss has withdrawn from consideration to be the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance at the Treasury Department.

• Scientists discovered a brand-new fish in the Mariana Trench, 26,000 feet under water. Amazing that we’re still finding stuff.

And here’s this week’s cool video: I’m just cynical enough to wonder if this video isn’t a hoax, which is pretty sad. It’s billed as “douchy internet prankster wonders what homeless people do with the money you give them, gets humbled by the answer.” Real or not real? You decide: